As much as I would like, I will not win a gold medal in next years’ Olympics in Beijing. Having been a sprinter in an earlier part of my life, I will have to hand over that glory next year to Tyson Gay, who has been pretty impressive of late in the 100 meters. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy the excitement, fame, and fortune that would come as a result of standing on the winners’ platform listening to my national anthem, I just know it cannot happen. In other words, I know when not to compete. This isn’t an “odds” game. What’s the message here? If you’re competitive and believe there is a million to one shot of winning, you will definitely take up the challenge. If there is absolutely no way you can win, you will choose to not compete. More on this in a bit…

Yesterday, HDS announced some pretty impressive SPC-1 results with our USP V storage platform. In fact, we achieved record breaking results which is no surprise to us. The SPC (Storage Performance Council) provides independent performance testing of workloads most relevant to the “real life” applications used by most of our collective customers. No, it is not a perfect predictor of what any customer might achieve in performance, but it is a pretty darn good indication of what to expect when comparing the performance from various vendors. A lot of very smart storage people contributed to the metrics measured by the SPC, and it is not to be taken lightly.

So, we did achieve phenomenal results, and yes, we’re proud of that. Almost twice the IOPS of IBM’s high-end array, for example, but what is interesting to me is not that, but how this would compare to what isn’t there – EMC. The SPC is a very legitimate performance organization that is supported by all of the major storage vendors. The SPC is supported by Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, Sun, HP, Dell, Fujitsu, 3Par, LSI, and others. That is, the SPC is supported by every major storage vendor and almost all of the smaller players. But who is missing? Yes, EMC, who originally joined the SPC and then bailed.

And why did EMC bail from the SPC? Let’s get back to the first paragraph. When you know you absolutely cannot win a contest, you’ll choose not to participate and address the deficiency with a multitude of excuses as Chuck Hollis babbled in his blog on July 12, 2007. The fact that EMC does not have a high-end storage product that can compare with the performance of HDS (and even IBM) is quite evident.

But Chuck didn’t stop making excuses in July. In his most recent blog he said “We’ve been in a lot of face-off benchmarks against the other guys. Sometimes we win, sometimes they win. A few of the vendors never seem to win (usually the do-it-in-the-storage guys), but that’s another story”.
So what’s the other story? As many of our customers have told me, IBM is significantly faster than EMC and HDS is significantly faster than IBM. I think this is a good lesson. Although screaming performance is not important to everyone, lack of performance certainly is and all of us, EMC included, spends a lot of R&D dollars on something that Chuck implies is unimportant.

As InfoStor put it: “However, EMC does not make its performance results public, nor does the company participate in industry standard benchmarking tests offered by organizations such as the Storage Performance Council, a practice that is commonplace with most of EMC’s competitors.”
And as Evaluator Group said, the invitation stands:

Chuck Standerfer called the results “very impressive,” and encouraged other enterprise storage vendors — namely, EMC — “to graciously accept this challenge and publish their SPC results so that customers would have a valid independent source for comparisons.”

So check our results in detail on the SPC Website, and the next time you’re thinking of a storage purchase, consider why one of the big guys in storage has chosen not to compete. We know why.

Let the games begin…

I think we all know the drill. Whenever you’re writing for public consumption (blogs, articles, papers, books, etc.), there’s this little thing called “fact checking” that’s required. True, it can be an annoying process that might cause you to miss a deadline or arrive late at a party, but we’re all obliged to do it. If your buddy tells you that BMW decided to stop building cars, would you post that in a blog without checking it out first? Of course not, but there is at least one person out there in blog-land that must have been really late to that party, or, in the spirit of Stephen Colbert, entered into the world of “truthiness”.

The past few weeks have been pretty busy here at HDS with some rather big announcements such as our mid-market virtual controller, the USP VM, and a certification with “VMware Infrastructure 3” (VI3). So when someone pointed out to me that Chuck Hollis of EMC fame claimed, two days after our VMware announcement, that our certification with VMware was, in fact, a pre-announcement and that we could not have been qualified because it’s “devilishly hard” (and we all know that only EMC can do “devilishly hard” things?). I had to set the record straight. First off, it was not “devilishly hard” at all, and if Chuck had actually read our press release he would have noticed that a VMware executive was quoted in the release. And if you look at VMware’s HCL list, you’ll see that ONLY Hitachi is listed for both internal storage AND external virtualized storage.

Another statement Chuck made was that EMC has “a boatload of experience with quals in general, storage virtualization in particular.” This struck me as a rather odd thing to say since “InVista” is not qualified under this supposedly secret VMware program and, in fact, hasn’t really hit the streets yet and it was originally announced 2 ½ years ago. So who has the experience in storage virtualization? The truth is EMC is really not doing very much in storage virtualization at all.

But in spite of Chuck’s rants, end-to-end virtualization is a big deal.

• Our Host Storage Domains allow multiple images (up to 1024) to attach via the same physical port, each securely protected and each starting their domains at LUN0 for boot from a SAN.
• Non-disruptive any-to-any data movement in support of VMotion activity
• QoS to ensure that the critical applications and servers get the resources required.
• A full suite of data replication products.

EMC doesn’t have an equivalent offering, and Chuck’s blog, in my mind, is just a “since-we-don’t-have-we’ll-poke-fun-at-those-who-do” routine.

Here are some other comments from analysts:

• ESG - “‘Day 1’ Support for VMware ESX Server 3.0: This will better facilitate the integration of server and storage virtualization strategies. Additionally, it should come as no surprise that HDS is the first vendor certified for external storage virtualization by VMware for its Infrastructure 3 program.”
• Illuminata - “Upon shipment, the USP VM will support attachment to virtualized server environments running VMware ESX 3.0.2. The USP VM, its Universal Volume Manager (for management of heterogeneous external storage volumes), and array management software will also have been certified by VMware. As such, HDS will have been the first vendor to obtain external storage virtualization certification directly from VMware.”"For VMware users in particular, understanding virtualized storage controllers like the USP VM is highly useful.”
• Ovum - “HDS announced day one support for VMware ESX Server 3.0, allowing for enhanced integration of server and storage virtualization strategies for additional efficiencies.”
• Josh Krischer and Associates - “This embedded virtualization layer is particularly useful for supporting heterogeneous clusters and server virtualization such as VMware ESX. In fact, Hitachi claims that it is the first vendor to obtain external storage virtualization certification from VMware and the USP VM has ‘Day 1’ support for VMware ESX Server 3.0 to facilitate the integration of server and storage virtualization infrastructures.”

I feel better now and at least I can enjoy the party.

Well, leave it to EMC to get me sufficiently fired up to resume my blogging after a lengthy hiatus. Yes, it’s been too long (some might argue too short), but I’m back. Call it a “blogcation” or a “blogaday”. If either of these terms make entry into Wikipedia I’ll take credit. My absence has been duly noted by friends, family, customers, and even some of our competitors!!

But to the topic at hand: EMC’s announcement of the DMX-4. It happened a few weeks ago today and as is customary for EMC, it was great drama and fanfare, but signifying little. Or at least that is how I see it, your opinion may vary, but that’s what these blogs are for – to sort out the controversies.

They announced 4Gb end-to-end support which puts them on par with other storage vendors, so that’s not exactly a reason to interrupt our normally scheduled programming. Along with that was a 30% improvement over DMX-3 (presumably coming from their “new and improved” point-to-point backend), which when compared to our recently announced USP-V really means that we’re only about 3x-4x faster. Nice try.

They announced “Thin Provisioning” to be delivered sometime next year (like InVista was announced well over 2 years ago, also to be delivered “next year”, and still really hasn’t). We’ll see if EMC can pull this one off.

They announced audit log capability through RSA. This is a capability we announced over a year ago (and doesn’t require a “lock-in” to RSA).

They announced tiered storage by allowing SATA II drives to be interspersed within the DMX-4 frame. Now this one sounds like it could have value, but I would think less than appears on the surface, since the primary consumer of SATA II is archiving and even with 750 GB drives, with DMX-4 you’re using up precious drive space behind an expensive controller for data that has little likelihood of subsequent access. I’m personally much in favor of the Hitachi solution that allows you to attach (externally) up to 247 petabyte of this stuff. But I’ll give them some credit for trying to ”re-invent” the tiered storage model that we delivered 3 years ago.  Related to this was the obligatory “green” announcement (no trees were harmed unless you consider the ones now missing from the marketing collateral that is flowing from Hopkington). My buddy Hu recently commented well on this on his blog so I won’t repeat

There were a few other minor things like a faster TimeFinder and a faster SRDF but maybe I’m just not easily impressed. For the most part I found the announcement rather vacuous.

It’s been a great week for storage people here in Silicon Valley. I’ve been in the storage business for decades and we’ve always known that data and storage is the most important element of a datacenter (there is a reason it’s called a DATAcenter). If you lose a server, it ain’t great, but you buy another. Losing your data is generally followed by words we’ve all heard but not appropriate for a corporate blog. Companies cease to exist when critical data is lost.

So why has it been a great week? Well, the “Valley” has been busy chronicling and celebrating the 50th anniversary of the invention of the disk drive, the RAMAC 305 from IBM. Parties, champagne, news articles, and television spots have kept us all busy enjoying this milestone. I won’t bore you with how many of these devices would be needed to reach the capacity of my cell phone, but suffice it to say this beast held only 5 megabytes, half the size of the PowerPoint presentation I’m giving next week.

A lot has changed in 50 years, including Hitachi’s purchase of IBM’s disk drive business a few years ago. But what happened 50 years ago was a magnificent moment in technology.

The second anniversary last week was the 2nd anniversary of our TagmaStore USP which has lead to its own revolution in storage virtualization. Although not exposed to the same media attention (I was so disappointed that Katie Couric didn’t mention TagmaStore in her nightly newscast!), it is still an amazing engineering achievement and has received its own collection of awards including sweeping all 5 categories in the latest survey from Storage Magazine.

But what brought this all about, was an inventor and his team. The inventor of disk storage was Rey Johnson, and although much has been written of him, and many awards have been bestowed upon him over the decades, not everyone appreciates the vision, determination, and brilliance required. Think about it. Some 52 years ago he thought “Gee, I think the world would be better if we could access data randomly and I think I’ll figure out a way to do it”. This was in a sequential world (punched cards, paper tape, magnetic tape) before databases, file systems, control structures, and while computers were still in their infancy. There used to be stories inside of IBM of this renegade engineer from Endicott, NY was basically “banished” 3000 miles away, with his team, to San Jose so that they wouldn’t “get in the way”. I doubt these stories are true since Rey was an accomplished inventor at the time, but what emerged from a humble warehouse on Notre Dame Avenue in downtown San Jose has become, depending on your sources, a $80-$120 million a year industry.

We have many smart and creative people today that continue to invent, but there is a Grand Canyon-sized gap between saying “I can improve this technology by doing such and such” and inventing an entirely new industry. That takes vision on a grand scale.

I suppose we all do it. You know, always analyzing the competition and trying to figure out their strategy, direction, strengths and weaknesses. It’s healthy to keep this focus. Recently, there has been a lot of discussion surrounding EMC and their strategy (well, there’s always discussion about the EMC strategy, not just recently).

A lot of this discussion has been about their acquisition strategy, which has been quite active in the past few years and a recent article by Jo Maitland, a veteran storage journalist, caught my eye. Aside from the hilarious reference to a Mr. Creosote sketch on Monty Python years ago, it summarized well what I’ve been thinking. It also contains a complete list of what companies have been acquired in the last 6 years.

But let’s be serious for a moment. What is their acquisition strategy? Is it to build on their core storage business? Is it to diversify their portfolio? Or is it to just generate revenue? I would certainly say it is NOT to build on their core storage business since their track record for integrating their acquisitions is quite poor, which for their customers, exacerbates the problem the rest of us are trying to solve, which is simplifying their storage infrastructure.

Perhaps it’s just a philosophical difference between our companies, but I’d rather bring integrated solutions to market - be it high end, mid-range, SAN/NAS/iSCSI, or archival solutions - than create more buckets of disparate storage sitting on the datacenter floor with different management controls and tools. Acquisitions on the surface are not bad and can complement a portfolio (and I’ll be the first to admit that some of EMC’s acquisitions have been positive for them), but it takes time to digest (the Mr. Creosote reference) and integrate. Without that process, the only one helped is the vendor, certainly not the customer.

But let EMC continue with the strategy, but let’s all watch what does or does not get integrated.

Someone told me, and I tried it, if you Google “DMX-3 blogs” my blog from a couple of months ago comes up on top. A personal achievement, and you’ll hopefully pardon me for bringing this up, but it leads to another fascination of mine which is how quickly things change around us. For example, the term “google” has become a relatively new verb (as in “I used the Yahoo search engine to google DMX-3”). Even the word “blog” is so new to our lexicon that Microsoft Word continues to flag it as a misspelling of “blob”. Maybe that will get fixed soon.

HDS hosted Shel Israel, (Right Image: Me, Shel, Hu, and David) co-author with Robert Scoble of Naked Conversations, the definitive book on blogging. One of the things that occurred to me in our conversations with Shel was how “ad blind” I’ve become.
Whether I’m reading a magazine or newspaper, I read it as though the ads do not exist. Advertising supplements? I page though them as quickly as I can. A few years ago when supermarkets started placing ads on their floors I thought that was a very clever way of getting a message across until I ran my shopping cart into a stroller with a 2-year old boy. The boy was amused, the mother was not, and since then I don’t “read the floor” anymore.

So while the marketing types are constantly looking for new avenues and ways to “message” products, some older, tried and proven techniques still exist. One such avenue is the corporate briefing center.

Some of you that have been loyal HDS customers for years, are no doubt familiar with our old as well as our new briefing centers (or EBC’s). The old EBC was small, poorly painted, and consisted of just rooms to conduct briefings. The new EBC is large, brightly lit with skylights and fountains. The old EBC did not exactly exude “high tech” (unless one considers an 80-pound projector “high-tech”). The new EBC is high-tech from top to bottom.

The reason I bring this up is that a recent conversation with our EBC staff revealed that customer visits have more than doubled since moving into the new EBC. (Left: I’m pictured next to our USP Tagmastore and one our EBC Hosts, Kiyoko) I find this fascinating since it not only demonstrates a continued commitment from my company to reach out to our customers and to make them more comfortable, but also a demonstration that the “means” of communication is as important as the message itself. Very impressive, and if you haven’t experienced our new EBC, put it on your “must see” list. Also, unlike the supermarket floor ads, the food and drinks in the new EBC are all free.

So take a trip and let us know what you think. Maybe I’ll see some of you down there and be able to show you around.

I live in San Francisco. And as anyone even remotely connected is aware, today is the 100th anniversary of “The Big One”, the 1906 Earthquake that essentially destroyed my city. It has also been a very interesting few weeks leading up to this anniversary since local media has been swamping us with historical fact, stories, nostalgia, and reprints of newspaper cover stories following the event. It is truly hard for me to imagine living through the devastation, destruction, and despair that occurred 100 years ago today. A special edition of the San Francisco Chronicle today, chronicled the devastation. That story, written 100 years ago, essentially said San Francisco ceased to exist. That story was wrong.

Fast forward to 2006. Those of you that know me well also know that I’ve made a bit of a career on the Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity circuit. (A few ex-managers of mine might even emphasize the “disaster” word and I would just hope they don’t post those opinions in public.) But disasters, unfortunately, are part of our existence on this small planet of ours. We also have, fortunately, a long history of ultimately absorbing these disasters and moving forward. In 1990 I stood amongst the devastation on Mt St. Helens with my son, and observed substantial vegetative growth through the ashes. Anyone visiting San Francisco today would see no indication (save a few plaques and monuments) that the city was “destroyed” 100 years ago. Everyone in San Francisco, and the greater Bay Area, knows that the next “Big One” is only a minute away. Our last major earthquake in 1989 was 1/30th the strength of the 1906 quake. It has never been a question of “if”, only of “when”, and no one truly believes we’re ready for, and prepared for, this eventual repeat disaster.

But this writing is not only about the “Big One”, but the “Big Easy”: New Orleans. This is, at least in the US, the site of our last major natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the greater Gulf Coast, inflicted similarly catastrophic damage to a very wide region. In a prophetic moment last summer, I was invited to speak at a conference in New Orleans next month (Continuity Insights, May 8-10). Little would I know that a month later, the region would be devastated by Katrina. While mesmerized by the television coverage, I thought that certainly the conference would be cancelled or moved, but I’m happy to say that it has not, and given the topic – Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity – I can’t think of a more appropriate site. The attendees will still, no doubt, tour the areas still in ruins, and maybe that will instill in the people the importance of disaster preparedness. To me, the conference is the business equivalent of the tiny plants pushing through the ashes on Mt. St. Helens. New Orleans is still (not “was”) a special city that will celebrate a similarly special anniversary 99 years from now, just like my city.

But there is a point to my diatribe on disasters. We tend to focus, rightfully so, on the human loss and impact. This is the way it should be. But what about the impact on business? Too many companies I talk to are completely unprepared. Disaster preparedness is too often viewed as having your personal resume stored on a hard drive outside of the datacenter. Or, perhaps, it’s viewed as a rather pricey “insurance policy” for something we all hope will never happen. But they do happen; they have happened in the past and they will happen again. The question is whether you believe you are prepared. Technology today allows for data protection at remote distances. We should all seriously consider this. Otherwise, tomorrow’s headline might have your company’s name in it. Or, if you kept a copy of your resume in a safe place, you might not care.

I’ll blog more about this in the days and weeks to come. But, I think too many of us underestimate the impact of the inevitable. This stuff really does happen. It’s really only a question of “when”.

There are three stages to SNW. Firstly, there is the event itself replete with all the networking (people as well as fibre channel), keynotes, sessions, demos, and late nights. The second stage is reading through all that is written about SNW: who said what, what was announced, and other press releases (“what my CEO really meant to say was…”). That is the stage we’re in right now. The third stage is, of course, getting ready for the next SNW.

So, back to stage two and the media and analyst coverage. Bob Schultz (GM of HP StorageWorks) took some jabs at EMC as did Andy Monshaw (IBM’s storage GM) by saying EMC did not yet have a virtualization product. In fact, it was a year ago that InVista was announced to great fanfare in New Orleans. (Well, actually, in May of 2002, EMC announced they would have a virtualization product on the market by 1H2003 but we’ll just chalk that up to a slight product slip). But a year after the formal announcement, InVista has failed to materialize in the market place. Even Byte&Switch questioned the progress in an article called Invisible InVista. I know EMC claims it is shipping the product, but sightings are pretty rare and don’t think a lot of people aren’t looking. I think Monshaw called it “chartware”.

Where does this leave EMC in the virtualization race? Virtualization is no longer on the “hype curve”, it is shipping, and it is being adopted quite well if our own experience is any indication. IBM claims SVC to be a success also. I’m sure InVista will ship some day, and the storage world is waiting to see when, and what features it will contain.

I think I’ve recovered. That is, from a 2-week excursion to Latin America, courtesy of my employer. In those two weeks I enjoyed time in Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo, Bogota, and Mexico City with a weekend jaunt to Peru and Machu Picchu (you expect me to sit in a hotel room and do e-mail all weekend?). (Dear Expense Account Police: the weekend trip was personally funded!!)

So, this was my first long trip there in 8-10 years and I must say I was very impressed with the changes in all five locations. Colombia, especially, struck me as achieving the most dramatic changes now enjoying impressive economic growth, low unemployment, an enviable education system, great restaurants and nightlife, and wonderful people. Isn’t it time we removed this country from the penalty box? It’s truly delightful! And at the other end of the spectrum, Machu Picchu hasn’t changed in about 500 years, I hear, except they now have a new transmission tower so we can all use our mobile phones while enjoying the ruins. This is progress? 

But at the risk of turning this into a travelogue (which I would love to, but might be deemed inappropriate for an HDS blog), what struck me were the changes overall. I hardly recognized some of the places and it’s like seeing a 14-year old niece for the first time in 10 years.

Because of this gap in time, I’m now allowed new observations, assessments, and opinions. This is a luxury we don’t often appreciate when we see things every day. I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog that my father would only buy cars from the same manufacturer. Did he ever open his eyes to see what else might be available? I think not. Things change over time, products change, people, places and, therefore assessments.

Hopefully our customers take fresh assessments of products whenever they buy (you knew I would swing this story around to storage at some point, didn’t you?). This hasn’t always been true, however, where many customers would continue to buy from what they are used to, without opening their eyes to the alternatives.

But things do change. What was “best” 10 years ago, or even 2 years ago, may no longer be. Keep your eyes open and whether you’re buying or traveling, look for the best available.

So I came across this interesting link on how a Canadian company had been using a Disaster Recovery vendor that was unable to execute their contract during the massive East Coast power failure in August of 2003. I won’t put the details in this blog since both the original DR vendor and the newly selected DR vendor are, in my opinion, outstanding and reputable firms, as is the customer in question. In my mind, this is not about failure at all, but about often overlooked details in planning a good DR strategy. In this case, the DR vendor was unfortunately on the same power grid. Someone, somewhere, should have caught this nasty detail.

So this story is in the subtleties, the “gotcha’s”, and how a $5 O-ring can cause a disaster. My favorite of these stories was a West Coast bank that, after our big 1989 earthquake, cheered because their backup generators kicked in flawlessly on the subsequent power failure, and operations continued. For a while.

It seems their generators were on the roof of the datacenter but their diesel supply was in the basement and the pumps used to bring the fuel to the roof were, you guessed it, electrical. Thirty minutes after the cheering, blackout occurred.

There’s a moral in here somewhere, that it’s the little and overlooked details will ultimately bring you down. Those of you serious about Disaster Recovery should look again to see how prepared you really are for the event we all hope never occurs.